Its Resolution Time Again!

Christmas 2011 has come and gone.  Last year I wanted to reach the goal of 100 lbs lost and I made it.  This year I've lost another 73 lbs.  I did not really have a specific goal in mind for this year but I did want to securely break through the plateau I've been at all through the autumn months.  I'm not so sure its completely behind me yet but I will continue striving to leave it in the dust.

A friend I know from work had a gastric bypass right before Thanksgiving.  She is back to work now and looks great!  She's down 30 pounds.  She said she kept away from people around Thanksgiving and still feels somewhat awkward around holiday foodfests.  I have to say that I no longer feel out of place at the family holiday table or anywhere else.  I can eat most of what everyone else eats with a few exceptions.  I've just adjusted to my plate having tiny portions of everything. I don't touch the desserts and really don't miss them.  I did eat a few Christmas cookies and had about 5 or 6 Hershey Kisses. (I actually claimed to one friend that I did not eat one piece of candy all season but I'd forgotten about those kisses.) I was worried that I might have gained yet I was hearing people tell me I looked thinner.  Well, the scale told me I was down another two pounds!

I went back to the gym this week after taking a hectic Christmas week off.  I enjoyed the relative peace at the gym because very few people were there.  Next week starts the New Year's resolution onslaught.  In January the gyms are crowded to the max.  You can't find a parking space or a vacant machine.  I saw a commercial tonight for Weight Watchers new campaign for male members.  Former NBA All-star Charles Barkley, who has struggled with weight issues, is the spokesperson.  This is a new direction for WW as mostly women show up at the meetings.

One of my friends has vowed to lose 100 lbs this year.  We had an interesting conversation about setting goals.  This friend sets finite goals with specific details about daily, weekly and monthly progress.  I was less than enthusiastic of this method because I feel that once the big goal is reached then behavior reverts to previous bad habits. My friend has a solution for this.  About a month shy of the set goal, a NEW goal is set continuing the reason to keep working.  This, to my friend, is better than perpetual lack of indulgences.  What ever works for you, I'm happy to be supportive.

In my earlier life I've given up smoking, drinking alcohol, tea and coffee.  I've always felt that those were easier to do without than certain foods.  One either is or is not a smoker.  The same applies to alcohol, caffeinated drinks and for that matter, recreational drugs.  While the latter was never a problem for me it certainly is for lots of people. I feel I've made permanent lifestyle changes that I will keep doing and don't plan on stopping anything when I get to a certain point. I really don't need desserts. I can have a sugar-free pudding or popsicle and be fine! (I really like that they've started printing calorie count on restaurant dessert menus. That way I know just how much I'm resisting.)

 I can't forget how miserable I was before my weight loss surgery.  I am back to shopping for clothes in regular stores instead of plus-size shops.  I'm no fashionista but at least I don't need Omar the Tentmaker anymore!

Happy New Year!
Love to all,
Marlena of Mohegan

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!

Baby Its Cold Outside

As we're halfway through December I'm already ready for spring. One morning as I was scraping ice off my windshield the temperature was 22.  Anyone familiar with the northeast knows that 22 degrees is nowhere near the bottom of the winter weather spectrum.  BRRRRRR!

We've been in our house for 23 years now.  We have a steam boiler heating system and our bedroom is directly over the furnace.  The first time the heat came on we found that our room became extremely hot and stuffy.  I hate to sleep in a room that is too hot and so we turned the radiator off.  Since that time we've never opened it up again and used an electric blanket  coldest weather.  I don't like sleeping with a lot of clothing either and through the years no matter what I weighed I managed to be comfortable.  We've gone through a lot of electric blankets over the years.  In addition when the heat is turned off in our room it distributes to the rest of the house more evenly.

This year I can't take it anymore.  I have been wearing sweats and socks to bed.  Even with the blanket set at nuclear level it has taken me a while to get comfortable.  I've been so cold that one night my husband, not so discreetly, made a little wall with the blankets between us so my cold wouldn't rub off on him.  I finally decided to open up the valve of the radiator.  My husband asked if I thought it was the weight loss that made the difference.  Well, yeah.  170 pounds of insulation makes a huge difference!

I used to think that being cold burned more calories.  It makes sense, right?  You need fuel to make heat.  I read that mountain climbers in the Himalayas or explorers in Antarctica have to eat 5000 calories a day to prevent losing muscle tissue.  Surely that should translate into more calories burned if the thermostat is set at 60 degrees in our house in the winter.  Well through the years I haven't noticed anyone in our home looking too lean in the cold months.  So much for theoretical dieting.

I have given away all my old winter coats because they were too big.  I refuse to buy a new coat before Christmas when I know they'll be on sale the day after.  So in the meantime I'm dressing in layers.  Lots of layers.

My husband couldn't be happier when I gave away my brown microsuede parka.  That coat was a bit of a menace.  It had lots of pockets, drawstrings and flaps. It was soft and very warm but I was always getting caught on things with it.  TWICE I got a flap caught on my turn signal in my Buick snapping the thing off completely.  Now I was much bigger back then and squeezing into the driver's seat was difficult. But this coat just was out of control.  The second time I broke it I didn't even want to go home and face my husband's anger.  The repair was about three hundred dollars each time and I had to rent a car as well.

Another time the coat turned me into a shoplifter!  I went to a pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my mother in law.  When I got out of the car at home I noticed that caught on one of the dangling strings was a pegboard rod with about six Chapsticks hanging from it.  There was a display under the counter at the pharmacy and my coat stole the whole row!  I was way too embarrassed to go back to the store and explain.

When I go to the gym I usually do my weight training first and then the stationary bike.  The week that I went five times I only did the weights three of those days.  I found if I go straight to the bike from the outside my hands are so cold that the sensors on the handlebars don't pick up my pulse.  I have to ride for a while on manual before I can set it to cardio which monitors the pulse and changes the resistance to maintain the target rate.  If I do the weights first I get warmed up sufficiently.

So it looks like it's gonna be a long, long winter. No matter what anyone says I'm not buying the global warming thing until I see palm trees growing in New York.

Love to all,
Marlena of Mohegan

A Little Obsession is Good For You

I've been working very hard this week on breaking through my latest plateau.  I normally go to the gym three days per week for my stationary bike and weight training.  This week I went five days in a row.  I do 23 miles in an hour each time.  So instead of my normal 70 miles a week I did 115.  I continued the weight training every other day.  Previous weeks I tried to keep my pedometer reading over 7000 steps per day by my normal activities supplemented by walking either at the track or around my neighborhood.  When it rained I walked at the mall.  When the weather is stormy my knees tend to protest all that impact.  The cycling is better. Besides 60 minutes of cycling gives me 10,000 steps or more.

 I am determined to continue my weight loss.  I refuse to let go of my momentum.  Am I obsessed?  Maybe. In a good way.  Really.

Several individuals in  my family tend toward obsessiveness.  My husband says he's not truly obsessive he just gets a lot accomplished.  He wishes I'd get obsessed about things like laundry or balancing my checkbook.  It makes him crazy that if I can't find something I don't tear the house apart looking like he does.  My attitude is that it will turn up.  Often if I try to think about something else the location of the lost item will pop into my head.  I feel that frantic searching creates negative energy that blocks the brain.

On the other hand I find it irritating that he insists on rearranging the dish cupboard after I've put dishes away.  When we first got married I tried to make his lunch for him to take to work.  He preferred to make his own sandwiches because mine had too much stuff on them.  He ate a bologna sandwich with only one slice of meat and plain yellow mustard on wheat bread every day for years.  Recently he made the switch to turkey because its healthier.  He's also very particular about the way he mows our lawn or shovels snow.  He gives our kids a hard time if they don't do the yard jobs his way.  (Although I could see his point when one of the kids mowed his name in the grass).  I mentioned these behaviors to my psychiatrist once.  He told me that these things aren't pathological just annoying to live with.

I've tried my whole life to avoid regimented behavior.  I enjoy being spontaneous.  I like that my daily commute goes in the opposite direction of the main flow of traffic.  Of course the fact that I DO commute shows that I'm not really as bohemian as I'd like to be.  Raising a family required some routines.  My husband is an early riser and I'm a night owl.  In spite of that I've worked the day shift for 27 years.  When you love somebody you adjust.

A friend complimented me the other day because he wishes he could sustain the behavior necessary to lose his excess pounds.  He doesn't know how I've kept focused for this long.  I just know that I must continue this attitude for the rest of my life.  I do not plan to reach a goal and the battle is over.  I've made a lifestyle change that must be permanent.  

My voice teacher wrote a book "Singing in Your Sleep" about developing obsessive behaviors that will lead to success as a professional opera singer.  He was telling me at my lesson the other day that when he was learning to sing he was afraid to go to sleep without repeating and perfecting a skill he had learned that day.  He thought he'd forget it during night otherwise.  He tells me that I've never learned to practice this way because I sing for my own enjoyment rather than for a career.  He's right of course.  

Obsessive compulsive disorder has probably been responsible for a lot of scientific and artistic achievements through history.  Overcoming repeated failures or rejections have produced useful technology, literature, music, architecture and discovery.  

Of course, there are limits.  When obsessiveness becomes so time consuming that normal living is impaired then professional help is necessary.  If you insist on washing your hands till they're raw, its a problem. 

 On the other hand, I really do need to start balancing the checkbook.

Love to all, 

Marlena of Mohegan

Somebody Please TURN THE PAGE!

I'm getting a little tired of losing the same five pounds.  My weight loss graph has been zig-zagging up and down for the past six weeks.  When I look at the graph for the past 18 months it's really not as bad as it seems.  I keep having to get out a picture of me before my surgery to remind myself that I've come a long way from where I was.  Still, it gets frustrating.

At work today I had one of those days that make me struggle to remember why I wanted to be a nurse.  Was it so little old ladies could spit at me or slap me?  Did I foresee a certain passive-aggressive son reminding me that I had to take off his mother's underwear before I put her on the commode?  Then there was the woman who swore there was a tube stuck up in her ass and I'd better get it the hell out of there if I knew what was good for me.

So on this dreary, rainy day where very little went right, I did not try to make myself feel better by eating something chocolate.  I did not lay on the couch and feel sorry for myself.  I went to the gym instead.  Even though I don't usually go two days in a row I felt like I needed to be there.  I listened to my latest mix of motivational heavy metal tunes and peddled into sweaty oblivion.  It worked.  I feel better.

As Scarlett O'Hara famously said "Tomorrow is another day".  And so it is.  Maybe I'll just have nice patients tomorrow.





Or maybe pigs will fly.

Love to all,
Marlena of Mohegan