Workin for a livin

Oh man, I am so behind on my blogs! I imagine by the time I go through and get caught up on everyone's news, you'll all be at your goal weights and running marathons.


I didn't even weigh in today because I forgot it was Tuesday!


I did wake up early and do some 30 Day Shred on my first day of work, just to establish for myself that it could be done. And should be! Today I slept in, so exhausted was I from the first day. But I aim to get up early tomorrow and do...something. (I'm thinking a run might be in order.)


On the food front, it's been ok, but not great. BF has turned himself into Betty Draper and has been packing up some fairly healthy and absolutely delicious homemade fair in many tiny bowls. Probably too much portion-wise, but not obscenely so. The office itself is stacked with all sorts of (free!) sodas, snacks, bars, and juices. Including some fine euro chocolate. I have not had anything but the yummy coffee so far. (Uh, yeah, I realize it's only been 2 days.)


Food and exercise tracking has fallen temporarily by the wayside as bodybugg is on the fritz and I haven't had time to troubleshoot. But I'm aware of the precarious situation I'm in - not yet in trouble, but drifting from the game plan a bit. I will continue to evaluate. Hopefully the weekend allows me to re-establish the routine a bit!

Running on (away from) St Patrick's Day

No, I did not eat this cupcake!

I just thought it made a better image than snapshots of the happy (drunken) revelers outside my building all along Second Avenue. It's sunny and in the 60's here in NY today. And the celebrants have been belly up to the bar since the dog's first walk a little after 8:00 this morning. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

So of course I wanted to take my run outside on this fine day. And where better to run than Central Park? Except the parade route lies between me and the Park, so I had to head east instead and run along the East River. It's "a-ight"...the path is nice, but while the river flows calmly on one side, there is a highway on the other side of you. (Cough, cough) I was so dehydrated. Like, couldn't swallow level of dehydration. I may have to get one of those crazy velcro belts that hold the little water bottles.

I have been taking my run outside the last few days now that I'm feeling better and the weather is warming up. And now that the awful cold and the dreary rain are behind me, I've also just noticed how bright and sunny it is later in the day, which translates to even more time to wile away the day reading blogs and stuff before I realize it's time to hustle to get that run in before the freaks come out. (Just kidding, there are absolutely no freaks in New York.)

Other than that, I've been really focused on my food choices and tracking my eating and using the bodybugg to track my daily caloric deficit. I'm feeling pretty good about this because in the past I've typically treated each day in isolation as opposed to keeping tabs on the running total overall. Which is a better gauge since of course there are higher and lower calorie input/output days and how they average out is more important than any given day alone.

And *You* Wanna Be My Latex Salesman?

February's a short month?

I'm retaining (3-5 lbs. worth of) water?

I gained muscle?

If we were playing 10,000 Pyramid, this would be the point when you'd yell out, "Reasons you didn't lose weight this month!" and Dick Clark would say, "Judges? No, I'm sorry, we're looking for Excuses there...Excuses for not losing weight this month"  Things a toothbrush would say! (Ok, I used to love that game show in my youth and I will abandon the imaginary set now.)

I am as frustrated and filled with self-loathing as George Costanza when his ruse to have Jerry be his front for the unemployment office failed.

Yes, that's me crying on the floor in my underwear after the Big Weigh-in. It's not a plateau. It's just slacking off on the food front. I sort of predicted this a post or two back, but it still sucks to be confronted with reality. 

I know what I need to do, but knowing is not doing. Over the last month, I checked off my scheduled runs and other workouts for the most part, but I let the food take care of itself on a lot of days. And if there's one thing I've learned the hard way, it is that the food does so NOT take care of itself. I have eaten poorly due to laziness, happiness, boredom, and defiance. Yes, defiance! I showed me, I guess. 

So onward and upward. Er, I mean downward. Why can't everyday be the first day of the life change, the day we're all fired up and gung ho? Or better yet, the last day, hitting the goal day? The slogging through bits in between those two points are really a drag sometimes. And even though I've testified before a jury of myself that I want this to be a life change and I don't care how long it takes, no one likes to flatline on the scale while they are still ostensibly hoping to lose weight. I was logging into my bodybugg software and it cheerfully exclaims I've owned the contraption for 56 weeks! Why would I want to know that, (a), and (b), why would I be excited about stagnating for so long, as indicated by the exclamation point. And p.s. Mr. Bugg, but the contraption was a gift and I activated the device for warranty purposes. That doesn't mean I was on a Program all those weeks. It doesn't mean I'm on one now.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing, honestly. That's what I'll be trying to figure out this month, I suppose....

Well, alright then!

I'm trying, I tells ya! Without going totally girlie & tmi on you, I'm having a very rough week. It involves debilitating cramps, faintness and cravings for red meat (iron) and chocolate (chocolate). Yet, I had in my last post promised to be good, good, good. Or at least strive for goodness. So I have been dragging myself to the gym for treadmill sessions. The me vs. me would have been hilarious if I were watching someone else battle her inner sloth. I basically bribed and negotiated my way through two 4-mile sessions. Passerby with mind-reading abilities might have caught these gems from my internal struggle:

• "You can run the whole thing at your slowest pace if you need to"
• "I'll try, but I'm already tired"
• "...although this is the shorter run this week, so you should try to go a bit faster maybe?"
• "3 minutes I've been on this thing???! I think it's broken"
• "You can drink water at a mile"
• "I might just do 2 miles"

And so on.  Eventually I got the sh!t over and done with and of course felt fantastic (and famished) afterwards. In a rush, I had the best little treat on the run from Starbucks. I love their yogurt parfaits once in a while. There's one with peaches and one with berries. All the nutrition info is on there and it's already in my online tracking database, so all signs point to Easy. (I actually prefer to make my own version of this at home and plan to make a batch of my homemade granola tomorrow, but the Starbucks option is nice to have when needed.) As I entered the cafe, I saw there was one yogurt left! It ended up being a dark cherry, which I wasn't sure about, but desperate times... It was delicious. Tasted like a cherry cobbler. And quite filling.

I'm a bit worried about this month's weigh-in next week. It's been a weird rocky month. Although I'm quite pumped about my running progress, my food (and drink) intake has been at times what can only be called a free-for-all. I'm trying to get that under control and make room for more planned indulgences. So far I've been sticking to my promise to myself to track all food (even the chocolate Entenman's donut, 300 calories for one, thank you very little!), do all slated runs (even with the cramp attack and the Fitness magazine article warning me about the risk of premenopausal women suffering exercise-induced strokes - how is that helping my FitQuest?!), and get in a yoga session (that hasn't happened yet, but I'm still committed to fitting it in on or before Sunday at sundown!)

Is it me? Is it Winter? I need a mojo overhaul. But I'm fighting on, so help me, I am... 

Again already

I'm baaaaaaaack. I just posted yesterday, but that post really helped me, so I'm going to try posting more and see how that goes. For one thing, I was really in a funk over the last week and since the title of the blog is Less Funk More Fit, well, I needed to get myself sorted. I find that it's really hard for me to post when I'm feeling blah. Which is probably when I most need to write down or try to capture whatever is swirling around in my head. And which may, in turn, help someone else, which is a really cool aspect of this whole blogging deal.

Posting helped me psych myself up for the gym, which I had been trying to gear up for all day and had only gotten to 50/50 on before the entry. Exploring perfection also got me thinking about the Strength class I was hemming and hawing my way out of attending. The last few times I've gone, I have been nitpicking the moves and not enjoying it as much as I did in the past. Yesterday it occurred to me that unless I plan on developing my own fitness class, there is likely never going to be some perfect class I love every time from start to finish. So I really enjoyed last night's class. I tried to go all out ("it's only an hour") and tried to complete all the sets, even when things started burning. There was only one point I rolled my eyes ("how many freaking lunges are we going to do anyway?!"), but caught myself and made a conscious effort to shift my focus.

So much of this journey is my own attitude. I felt good about my performance in the class and instead of nitpicking my instructor's choices in moves and music, I instead appreciated her for pushing me much farther than I would have ever contemplated going on my own.

In other update news, BF placed an order for groceries online and I reminded him to order me my recovery drink (chocolate milk.)  We had some back and forth on the selection; one was my organic standby and the other was the holy grail of milk from the dairy found at area Farmers' Markets, which had just added some of their products to the online grocery service. Well, when I came back from a 4-miler today, lo and behold, both were in the fridge. Apparently BF forgot to delete the first one ordered after I found out about the holy grail. "Chug up," says BF. Mmph. I'll chug up - in moderation. But that's a lot of milk!

My last couple weigh-ins have been flatlining or to put a positive spin on it: Maintenance Preview. So I'm really trying to get my fitness on, but not in a punishing way, more of a take-the-bull-by-the-horns-you-go-girl motivational approach. I've also tried to track my food better. Today I revisited weighing & measuring, the dastardly duo dreaded by losers the land over. (Even for the sake of alliteration I won't say "dieters".) When I track my food online and select natural peanut butter (ingredients: peanuts), it defaults to 2 Tablespoons as a serving, which I thought was absurd! "No way do I eat 2 T's of PB," and I'd change it to 1. Well, 1 might be sufficient on my whole wheat english muffins, but it only covered one piece of my whole wheat toast. Enlightening. And depressing. But why track if I'm going to make up some fantasy (perfectionist?) idealized version of my intake?

I want to own my journey. My decisions. I knocked out [x] miles... I worked out for at least an hour 6 days this week... I ate 2 Tablespoons of peanut butter... So be it.